How to Test with Internet Explorer on a Mac

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To my surprise, not everybody knows how to test with Internet Explorer on a Mac. After responding to How do I run Internet Explorer using ruby mine on a mac question at Stack Overflow, I have decided to create a blog post, mostly copy/pasting my answer.

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I think you will find 80% of the problems if you test your app with any browser (see 80–20 rule). Said that, I also test with IE.

There are a few better ways to test with IE on a Mac than installing IE for Mac:

• Install Windows in a virtual machine with:
  • VirtualBox (free)
  • VMware Fusion (30-day free trial, then 63.23 USD)
  • Parallels (did not use it, looks like they have 14-day free trial and then 79.99 USD)
• Install Windows on your Mac machine with Boot Camp

If you pick dual boot or virtual machine you will have to buy Windows too. (Upgrade from a previous Windows version is 39.99 USD, could not find out how much the full version costs.)

• Use a cloud service that will run IE for you:
  • Sauce Labs (free account provides testing Windows for 100 minutes automated + 30 minutes manual every month, paid plans start with 12 USD/month)
  • TestingBot (free account provides testing for 100 minutes in the first two weeks, paid plans start with 40 USD/month)

MediaWiki (software that runs Wikipedia) has a few Watir tests that drive Chrome, Firefox and IE on Sauce Labs, the code is at github.com/wikimedia/qa-browsertests.